Rights Groups Work on Measure To Reverse Court's Bias Rulings

By SUSAN F. RASKY, Special to The New York Times

Published: December 30, 1989

WASHINGTON, Dec. 29—
Civil rights organizations and their major Congressional allies are putting finishing touches on legislation to reverse recent Supreme Court decisions that have made it harder to show job discrimination and easier to challenge affirmative action programs.

The legislation, which is to be introduced shortly after Congress begins its new session on Jan. 23, is the product of months of negotiations and debate among the civil rights groups over whether to seek a narrow bill simply responding to the Court rulings or to seek an overhaul of the nation's basic civil rights laws. In the end, rights groups and Congressional staff members said, political strategy dictated the narrower approach.

The legislation will address three major cases, all decided by 5-to-4 margins in June, in which civil rights supporters believe the Court substantially undercut protection against job discrimination. These are the cases:

* Patterson v. McClean Credit Union, in which the Court ruled that an 1866 law prohibiting racial discrimination in contracts applies only to hiring agreements, not to on-the-job discrimination.

* Wards Cove Packing Company Inc. v. Antonio, in which the Court ruled that in cases brought under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the plaintiff has the burden of proving that an employer had no business reason for a practice with discriminatory effects.

* Martin v. Wilks, in which the Court held that court-approved affirmative action plans can be challenged as reverse discrimination, even years after they have been adopted, by groups that are not party to the plans.

''What we are trying to do is to reinstate the scope of coverage of the major employment rights statutes and the procedural rules governing these statutes that have been in place for the past 15 to 25 years,'' said Ralph G. Neas, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the organization that coordinates civil rights lobbying in Washington. Allies in Congress

What the civil rights groups are also trying to do is duplicate the bipartisan support they mustered in successful political battles to overturn Supreme Court decisions during the Reagan Administration. Their chief strategist and most influential ally on Capitol Hill is Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who heads the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee. Mr. Kennedy also holds a senior position on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which shares jurisdiction over civil rights issues.

Mr. Kennedy, the chief Senate sponsor of the legislation, says he is confident that the coalition will prevail. His committee staff has made plans for hearings on the bill in February and March, hoping to bring the measure to the Senate floor by late spring.

''This is no time for Congress to acquiesce in significant retreats in any area of civil rights,'' he said. ''We still have too far to go.''

But in the six months it has taken to fashion a legislative response to the Court's decisions, groups that support the Court's rulings have also been building their case. Senators Orrin G. Hatch of Utah and Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, both Republicans, say they will fight the legislation, and some business groups that have previously backed rights measures are not convinced the rulings have significantly weakened protection against discrimination. White House Wants to Wait and See

Officials in the Bush Administration say that they want to wait and monitor the impact of the decisions but that so far they see no need for corrective legislation. The rights groups are countering with studies to show that scores of discrimination cases have been dismissed by lower courts on the basis of the Supreme Court's rulings.

Barbara Arnwine, executive director for the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said she believes opponents ''are going to attempt to tie this legislation up with a big ribbon marked affirmative action and reverse discrimination so they can avoid the substance of the debate.''

Representative Augustus F. Hawkins, the California Democrat who heads the House Education and Labor Committee, plans to introduce an identical bill in the House.

But as always, it is the political arithmetic of the Senate that is key to the passage of civil rights legislation.

''We can always get a majority, but what we want is the broadest possible bipartisan coalition,'' Mr. Neas said, noting that 60 votes are needed in the Senate to shut off debate and that 67 are needed to guarantee the override of a Presidential veto.

But unlike previous fights to overturn Court rulings on narrow civil rights issues or the more symbolically significant 1982 fight to extend the Voting Rights Act and overturn a 1980 decision involving it, the current cases are complicated and difficult to dramatize in human terms. Civil rights groups see their biggest task as convincing lawmakers and the public that the statutes narrowed by the Court are as important today as they were two decades ago.

''I tell people it's the difference between putting termites at the base of a structure or dynamiting it, and this is clearly the termite approach,'' Ms. Arnwine said of the Court decisions. ''The structure will fall if you don't take corrective action.''